Construction, industrial or mining worksites often require the installation of temporary lighting and/or surveillance equipment at an elevated height. Temporary or movable lighting and/or surveillance equipment is also required in many other remote or isolated applications. Other equipment requiring an electricity supply, such as motorised gates, may also be required for temporary installations.
As work progresses or finishes, the equipment may need to be relocated to follow the work location or be removed altogether. Mobile towers mounted on a wheel base or tripod are commonly provided for temporary installations. Such installations are typically complex constructions that are expensive to manufacture, transport and assemble.
Maintenance may also need to be carried out on the equipment during its deployment. Towers that allow the equipment to be lowered for maintenance typically have complex and expensive built-in mechanisms for raising and lowering the equipment. This results in the towers being expensive to manufacture.
Electrical equipment located in remote locations will often not have access to a power grid and typically mobile equipment installations require an independent source of power, such as a diesel generator. Diesel generators are typically provided with the equipment tower and are used as the exclusive source of power for the electrical equipment. However, diesel generators are noisy, produce greenhouse gases and other pollutants, and require regular service to fill the diesel tank. In addition, diesel generators are dangerous if operated indoors or in a confined space.
As an alternative, solar panels may be used to provide power to the electrical equipment. However, having solar panels provided on the tower can interfere with the operation of the electrical equipment, by obscuring the view of the camera or casting a shadow.
Locating solar panels at the top of the equipment tower results in the equipment being cumbersomely heavy. This typically requires a much stronger support post and base to support the extra weight and, if the tower is collapsible, will usually mean that the equipment tower cannot be raised manually. The wind load on solar panels at the top of an equipment tower also creates a large moment at the base of the equipment tower, which means that the base needs wide and heavy duty stabilisers. The additional weight and size of the stronger support post and stabilisers adds to the manufacturing complexity and cost of the equipment tower and results in a larger more unwieldy apparatus.
As a result, known towers tend to be large, heavy and have fixed dimensions. This makes them difficult and expensive to transport, install and remove.